Círculos Crescentes has several stylistic and thematic elements in common with your previous film, Sofia Foi (FID 2023), in which you undertook a creative process with the protagonist, Sofia Tomic. In this new work of yours, the main interpreter is Milo Sardinha. How did the collaboration for this film come about and how did you build the character of the protagonist?
Although Milo and I were born and raised in the same region in the countryside of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, we only got to know each other in Lisbon when we shared an apartment. I think we connected with each other easily because we shared the same background and had similar experiences regarding living abroad.
After a few months, we developed a relationship, and then, a year later, we moved to Lüneburg, a very small town in northern Germany. We lived together for a year in Lüneburg, but then I decided to go back to Brazil. At the end of last year, I had the chance to go to Turin, Italy to screen my first feature film, Sofia Foi, which premiered at FID 2023. While I was in Europe, I took the opportunity to visit Milo for one week. Apart from being together, I really wanted to film Milo and the city.
Like my previous film, making Círculos Crescentes was a very intuitive process. I was inspired by a picture I took of Milo standing still in the forest, wearing an orange coat. My first desire was very simple, to somehow recreate this image and to film someone standing up, so we could see their whole body.
As soon as you see someone’s whole body, you also see the space they’re in. So space was also important. From that still image I started imagining what could come before and after that scene, someone waiting for something unknown. The anonymous character has a subtle intent of movement, in which they are yearning for connection, just as I did when living abroad.
In addition, Círculos Crescentes is a film built on my memory of Lüneburg and also built on conversations I had with Milo, mostly about their experience living in Germany and their experience with their own body in this new context.
Recalling a specific conversation we had, Milo told me that during really cold weather, like autumn and winter, they hardly saw their own body because of all the layers of clothing you need to keep yourself warm. The fact that they didn’t see their body as often, made them think about it less. As a non-binary person that constantly questions their body, not seeing it as often provided Milo a temporary escape from confronting body dysmorphia.
Therefore, it became important to emphasize all the layers of clothing that hindered the visibility of what was underneath. At the same time, reflecting on the non-binary gender and these layers, the presence of the binder became a material component of the film. Its presence as a layer is independent of weather conditions, but it exists for the gender identification of those who wear it.
On the other hand, this disconnection with their own body increased with a sense of isolation and was felt or experienced as anguish. The orange coat, so present in the film, marks the presence of an imposed separation between the character’s body and the landscape.
Similar to Sofia Foi, in which we see a character losing the boundaries of the self in a non-controlled way, in Círculos Crescentes, the protagonist has the intent of connection with the outside environment, but most of the time the outcome is an experience of frustration. The character’s search seems to unfold infinitely, or as in Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen, which opens and closes the film, says, « (…) and I circle for a thousand years long ».
How did you discover this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, from which the film also borrows its title? How did it inspire the film?
The first time I discovered this poem was through a book with Portuguese translations by José Paulo Paes, made of a collection of poems by Rilke. This was the poem that most caught my attention very much because of the images it evoked: the tower, the falcon, the storm, and also the figure of growing circles. I’ve also been struck by this certain indeterminacy of being, the existential indefiniteness and confusion about the self.
For the film, I had the poem in mind while I was shooting and when I was editing it. But it only appeared in material presence at a later stage in the editing process. I also found it an interesting work to compare both the Portuguese translation and the original and see that some images changed, especially the image of the circles. In German, it’s much more related to the idea of a ring. In the English translation by David Keplinger, the image of the coil appeared, which refers to living life through a spiral shape.
As Keplinger writes, «the image of the circles in the poem speaks about Rilke’s biography, which doesn’t progress in a straight line or neat arc.» One can also see that Rilke was imbued with a feeling of not belonging, having lived in different countries during his life.
It was exciting to relate the circularity of the film’s narrative structure to the circularity of the poem and also to this indefiniteness of being. The film talks about the process of living in a place and trying to feel some sense of belonging to this space and not finding it. For me, the image of growing circles and living in a circular way can also be interpreted as the movement of life itself and in this process of aging, trying to find some meaning for this experience.
That’s why I find the sequence of the children at the bus stop after leaving school so meaningful. There’s a spontaneity in the action of playing with the snow while waiting to take the same route every day, from home to school, school to home, the same circular path. In short, things fell into place very naturally regarding the poem and the film, I just had to pay attention to the movement of things.
Could you tell us about the importance of the landscape in the film?
From a very personal perspective, during a context of isolation that lacked conversations, encounters, and exchanges with other people, something that brought me comfort and a sense of belonging was connecting with the landscape. All the entities that are part of nature appeared to me in a profound material way, through visual and audible presence, which is something I hadn’t felt living surrounded by many people in larger cities.
When thinking about the protagonist of Círculos Crescentes and their relationship with themself and their surroundings, I believe that the presence of the landscape in the film is an escape from this feeling of disconnection to a place and at some point, a response to a certain alienation from space.
After living one year in Germany, I wanted to translate my experiences and feelings through moving images, sound, and duration. Círculos Crescentes is based on the act of looking and listening to a person and a landscape, which is an approach very present in the work of other filmmakers, such as James Benning, C.W. Winter, Anders Erdström, and Sharon Lockhart.
Something very special that happened while making this film was finding a specific tree whose presence was very dear to me, so much that I had to include it twice in the final edit. When I talk about presence, I’m not just referring to images, I’m also thinking about sound. The construction of the film’s atmosphere, which was done very intuitively and sensorially, didn’t happen through writing.
My sonic experience of the city was shaped by specific sounds: the sound of the ambulance, the birds, incomprehensible conversations, and the specific sound of melting snow. I invested in this last sound because it relates very closely to being aware of the layers that come and go, the durational experience of time passing, and it appeared strongly with the very simple decision to keep the microphone very low to the ground. This attention to the landscape, to the specific sounds of this city, came from the feeling of searching and finding connection in space.
Interview by Marco Cipollini
